


Sticks and Stones

by GuardianKarenTerrier



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Insecurity, Protective Toothless, Social Anxiety, Soul-Searching, emotional scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:32:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianKarenTerrier/pseuds/GuardianKarenTerrier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hardest thing for Hiccup to accept is that he finally has acceptance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sticks and Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will leave lasting psychological damage. 
> 
> I have severe social anxiety, have always worked with animals, and am one of those people who's often told I 'have a way with animals' and who's never really been comfortable with the compliment. This... sort of wrote itself.

 

“I don’t get it, Toothless,” Hiccup sighed, pitching another rock into the lake. “Everything I wanted and I _still_ end up hiding in the woods with you.”

He did understand, though, if he was honest with himself- and he usually was, not having had anyone else to be honest _with_. The change from Hiccup the Useless to Hiccup the Dragon Tamer had been… abrupt, to say the least. He was still easily, so easily overwhelmed by all the positive attention from the rest of the village.

It still didn’t seem real. He wasn’t sure it ever would. He couldn’t seem to get over the feeling that it could all just vanish on him, that maybe he was only dreaming. That had _happened_ before, after all.  He'd wanted so badly, and so long, to be _worth_ something to the village.  More than a screw-up, more than a runt, more than the Chief's whispered embarrassment. He'd never quite been sure if Stoic was truly that embarrassed about his son, but the rest of the village did a fine job feeling that way for him.

And now Hiccup couldn't adjust.

He wasn’t used to having a skill he was praised for.  He wasn't convinced yet, deep down, that it was going to last.

He was the Dragon Trainer. The beasts loved him. Did you see that, Gobber, that Nightmare just calmed right down for Hiccup! Stoick, your boy sure does have a way with the dragons. Are we sure they don’t just think he’s one of them?

It made him uneasy.

He actually was far more comfortable around the dragons than he was around his peers. He didn’t always want to admit that, but he knew it was true. There was less bad history between him and the dragons than between him and, say, Snotlout. Even at their most violent the dragons had never made a point of going after him specifically. He _understood_ dragons in a way he never had managed to understand humans. Hel, given a choice between dealing with an angry Stormfly or an angry Astrid, he knew who he'd pick. He only stood a chance of reasoning with one of them, and that one was not his girlfriend. He was still so, so bad with people, and he knew it. He was better with dragons than with humans.

And yet, frustrating as that sometimes was, it was a talent he took a great deal of pride in.

They’d all heard tales of people who were more attuned to the animals around them. People for whom even wild animals just seemed to stop and listen. Hiccup had admired them as much as anyone had, and he’d always been very good with animals himself. He’d secretly harboured hope for a very long time that he’d turn out to be one of those people so talented and that maybe that way he could earn respect from the village.

He’d been thinking more along the lines of keeping the village safe from bears or wolves, though. Even he had never dreamed of extending that familiarity with animals to dragons, not even in his most vivid imaginings. He’d never even been completely comfortable acknowledging that he _did_ have a way with animals. It was something a lot of people _wanted_ to be able to do- it seemed awfully presumptuous to think _he_ could.

Except he very clearly could.

Other people acknowledging it finally made it true for him. He was a dragon trainer. He was _their_ dragon trainer.

Toothless headbutted him and crooned. Hiccup reached up and scratched behind his friend’s ear, absently hissing back.

“You don’t even know you’re doing that, do you?”

“Astrid!” Hiccup scrambled to his feet, Toothless helping to nudge him upright. “How long have you been here? Doing what?”

“Long enough to know you’re being way too introspective, and you really _don’t_ realize it, do you?” She crossed her arms as Stormfly settled down behind her.

Hiccup tilted his head, inviting her to explain further.

“That!” Astrid exclaimed.

“What?” Hiccup asked, bewildered. Toothless made a questioning noise and Hiccup replied with a quick murmur and a pat on the snout.

“That!” Astrid said, exasperated.

“ _What?_ ”

“You respond to the dragons,” Astrid said, explaining very slowly.

Hiccup tilted his head again, because _obviously_. “Ye-es?”

“No, I mean,” Astrid shook her head in frustration. “Never mind. You are really good with the dragons, you know that?”

Hiccup smiled a little as Toothless nudged him. “Better than I ever have been with other Vikings.”

“That’s okay,” Astrid said, voice dropping as she moved closer. “You are a lot _more_ than any of the others, Hiccup.”

Hiccup waved a hand at himself and raised an eyebrow.

“You know what I meant!”

She dropped down next to him on the grass, mock-scowling as he laughed. "I was being honest, though. It's amazing to see you with Toothless.  Actually, with any dragon, but especially him. Gobber's right, the dragons practically treat you as one of them."

"Gobber said that?" Hiccup winced and let his head fall to rest on Toothless' shoulder as he sifted through the rest of Astrid's statement. Compliments still made him feel a little like the ground had gone wobbly under him, even when they were from Gobber, who at least had praised Hiccup's skill as a blacksmith even before Toothless.

"I know that expression, Hiccup," Astrid said, and the note of warning in her voice made Toothless curl his tail protectively around Hiccup. "What now?"

He knew Astrid wouldn't let him get away without an honest answer. "I, uh. I was thinking that with Toothless, the dragons sorta accepted me _before_ any of the villagers did. Except maybe Gobber," he felt compelled to add, because Gobber had always been good to him. Hiccup thought there might have been days Gobber's encouragement in the smithy was all that had kept him going.

Which, of course, didn't help the feeling that someone was going to pull the rug out from under him any moment now and he'd be good old Hiccup the Useless again.

_But I'd have Toothless. We could leave if we had to. We know how to fend for ourselves, now._

It probably should have concerned Hiccup a little more that it was the knowledge he could _leave_ that helped him cope, but he was just happy to have a coping mechanism at all.

Astrid sighed, startling Hiccup, who'd fallen so far into his own introspection he'd nearly forgotten she was there. "I can say I'm sorry, Hiccup, but that doesn't erase years of treating you terribly. But no one's going to do that now. Not now that you're our own Dragon Trainer," she added with a smile.

_Not now that I'm finally useful_ , Hiccup thought, and sighed himself. Toothless curled closer and snuffled his hair, as if sensing his human's thoughts. Maybe he was. Hiccup wouldn't be all that surprised. Toothless really did understand him best.

"Hiccup," Astrid groaned, leaning back rather than forward, carefully not intruding on Toothless' protective posturing. "You still haven't learned to take a compliment, have you?"

"Maybe I'm still not familiar with them," Hiccup snapped back, stung, and then crowded himself closer to Toothless because he really shouldn't have snapped back like that.

Astrid's reply, when it came, was measured and gentle. "I know. We're working on that. You deserve them- you always did, even when we didn't realize it."

That one's too much, and as Hiccup shuts his eyes tightly he feels Toothless' wing hunch up and over to hide him. He wonders briefly where Stormfly is, but that's swept away as Astrid keeps talking.

"I'll keep telling you until you believe me, you know," she says, still with that terrible gentleness. Hiccup knows that tone. Hiccup uses that tone, himself, with wounded Terrible Terrors and panicking Nightmares. He kind of hates that it's working on him, too. "None of us could have done what you did. None of us can do it now, even after you've taught us. We can try, and we have some success, and nothing that matches what you accomplished on your own."

Toothless' wing twitches up and away again slightly. Hiccup doesn't open his eyes, not quite, but slits them enough to know that he's visible to Astrid again, though likely not to anyone else who happens to stumble across them.

"You're as brave as the rest of us," Astrid continues, inexorably. "And smarter- none of us could have come up with that harness and you know it."

He lets his eyes crack open more. Astrid is sitting almost perfectly still, though the arm she has out in position for an arm-clasp trembles slightly from holding position. She's even angled to clasp his left arm. Stormfly is close now, he sees, the other dragon having moved to her rider's side in the clearing but keeping a respectful distance.

"And stubborn!" Astrid continues, sounding happier by the moment. "I thought your dad was stubborn, but man! You were stubborn enough to go against years and years of tradition to train Toothless! That's the most impressive thing I'd ever heard, you know that?"

_Stubborn_. Weirdly, it's that trait that makes Hiccup stop drawing away. Stubborn. Viking are supposed to be stubborn; hard, determined, not failures. Not worthless, not useless, _not failures_. And if he'd been stubborn enough to keep fighting past every time he'd failed, then he is, by definition, not a failure. Because if nothing else, at least no one could say he gave up.

He lets Astrid clasp his arm then, lets her draw him out from under the shadow of Toothless' wing if not the shelter of his side, and slowly finds himself smiling again.

With her free hand, Astrid gestures up and down all Hiccup's body, says, "I fell in love with all of you," and kisses him soundly in the shelter of their dragons.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The best thing my therapist could have told me was that I have a stubborn streak. I'd been told all my life that I gave up too easily, and she listed all the things I'd done because I wanted them badly enough, and pointed out that I did them /despite/ that anxiety, and that's why I specifically used the word stubborn. That, and it has strong positive connotations in my family (why yes, I have actually got Viking ancestry).


End file.
